When the Farrelly Brothers’ Three Stooges movie first came together a couple years ago, at least if it was going to be a disaster, having Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, and Jim Carrey in the cast ensured that it’d still be a big deal. Then Sean Penn got a divorce, then changed his mind twice, then actually got divorced, and then moved to Haiti and started banging Scarlett Johansson, and the project lost its stars and was thrown into limbo. Now it’s coming back together (set to shoot in a month) with Will Sasso from Mad TV/Sh!t My Dad Says as Curly, Sean Hayes from Will & Grace as Larry, and a Moe as yet to get determined. That’s right, they found a ‘mo, but he’s playing Larry. (*rimshot, slide whistle, apology letter to GLAAD*)

No filmmakers have put more time into a Stooges film than the Farrellys. They’ve been working on script drafts for about 12 years. The Farrellys feel they overcame the structural problems by breaking the film up into three 27-minute-long segments. The feature tells a single story, but the breaks give the audience a chance to catch its breath. The structure also lends the feel of the abbreviated running time of the original Stooges shorts, and gives the Farrellys the chance to use all three of the signature Stooges theme songs. “There will be non-stop slapping, more in the tone of Dumb and Dumber than anything else we’ve done,” Peter Farrelly told me recently. “Our goal is 85 minutes of laughs in a film that will be very respectful of who the Stooges were. It’s by far the riskiest project we’ve ever done, without question, but it is also the one closest to our hearts.” [Deadline]

Well, uh… good luck. Nothing against the current cast (I did love Will Sasso in Drop Dead Gorgeous), but they make it feel more like a basic-cable biopic than the huge dramatic actors cast against type. Farrelly Brothers’ movies have felt outdated since the early 2000s, but maybe doing something overtly retro will suit them better? I don’t know. Trying to recapture the magic of the Three Stooges is like catching lightning in a bottle, or trying to save a coffee can filled with farts in your freezer. Comedy is kind of like farts, when you think about it, in that no one fully understands their properties, but that’s what makes them so beautiful. (*walks off humming “What a Wonderful World”*)